Mother of Pearl
A Novel
-
- £10.99
-
- £10.99
Publisher Description
The hilarious chronicle of the McAlister clan, a collection of bickering southern eccentrics whose family history is a parade of missteps, mishaps, and certifiable insanity
In the later years of her life, widow and grandmother Pearl decides to return to East Texas and move in with her sister, Wanda Gay—despite the fact that the two have never agreed on anything. (It is no wonder that brother Frank preferred the relative quiet of a prison cell.) A particular bone of contention seems to be the perceived saintliness or demonic nature of their late mother, Eugenia Fane. An unbending, overbearing, man-hating matriarch who not-so-stoically endured her own mother, Eugenia set a standard that the McAlister women would find nearly impossible—and quite mad—to try to live up to. Through the disputed remembrances, distortions, and wound saltings of Wanda Gay and Pearl, the twisted personal history of the McAlister dynasty comes to light, revealing what it is exactly that makes a family endure in spite of itself.
Like Faulkner in a funhouse, in Mother of Pearl, acclaimed author Edward Swift (Splendora) gives readers an extraordinary Southern gothic tale filled with unbridled dark humor, outrageous incidents, and wildly unforgettable characters.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Although this tale about a family acting out its nuttiness winds down before it ends, good humor and the author's respect for his characters prevail. Widowed grandmother Pearl moved back home to East Texas, to live with sister Wanda Gay. They bicker continually about where to plant new rose bushes, whether their mother was devil or saint, how to raise children, what to wear. Swift reveals, through flashbacks and the women's natterings, how people bear the overwhelming weight of an inherited past: their grandmother, who responded to her husband's affair with their mulatto housekeeper by becoming outrageously crazy; their mother, who, wanting above all to appear normal, learned to detest men, to play the piano and finally to ape her mother's flambuoyant death. Though some of this seems contrived, Pearl, who favors her father, an iconoclastic auto mechanic, partly escapes and partly is bound to her heritage in this mostly genial, slightly frayed, story from the author of The Christopher Park Regulars.
